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Thursday, October 09, 2003
In memoriam: Tim Robinson I am sad to say that Tim Robinson died at the age of 58 of complications from colon cancer surgery. Tim was a giant both in legal publishing and in online publishing. A former Washington Post reporter who covered legal affairs, he became editor of the National Law Journal in 1980 and then editor and associate publisher of the Los Angeles Daily Journal in 1989. He joined Excite and became a pioneer in online journalism. Earlier this year, he moved from California to Washington, D.C., to become editorial director for search and navigation at America Online. I met Tim in 1988. Although we lived on opposite coasts for many years, we managed to stay in touch by e-mail and the occasional telephone call. Two years ago, when I was editor of the National Law Journal, Tim stopped in, unannounced, to pay me a visit. That was the last time I saw him. Tim was intelligent, quick-witted, commanding and always entertaining. He will be missed. Monday, October 06, 2003
How to explain blawgs? 'Professorial behavior patterns.' I missed Eugene Volokh's day 2 BloggerCon panel on blogs and the law, but Doug Simpson reports that Volokh, commenting on why lawyers blog, said the motive is largely not monetary. Rather, many law blogs are what he called "prof blogs," written by professors or folks with "professorial behavior patterns." Not sure that fully explains all the entries on Denise Howell's blawg list. I think the motive is, indeed, money for many lawyer bloggers. Not direct cash in the pocket, of course, but a payoff in greater exposure generally and greater credibility within a given field, leading somewhere down the line to more referrals, more clients and more -- yes -- money. Put me down as a 10 for blogging "Are you a 10?" Chris Lydon prodded attendees at BloggerCon, measuring the significance they attach to blogging as a phenomenon. I didn't have to think hard to know I'm somewhere on the high end of the scale. But I did have to think a bit harder about why. Are blogs as significant as the printing press, the telephone, even the Internet itself? Blogging is important because it is another step in breaking down barriers to communication. Everyone says it, but it's true: The excitement I feel about blogging is the same I felt when I first ventured on to the Internet a decade ago. The world suddenly became smaller, more intimate. Blogging takes that to the next level. It doesn't just break down geographic barriers and time barriers, but also social, professional and interest-group barriers. I consider my blog to be primarily for lawyers. But I learn everyday that its readers come from all walks of life and all areas of the world. That shouldn't surprise me, because I sure don't read only law blogs. I read blogs about journalism, blogs about politics, blogs about tech, blogs about navel gazing, blogs about anything that interests me. Blogs are more the Web than the Web ever was before. I shoot out a strand to connect to that blog on law and then to that blog on journalism and then to that blog on tech. And some of those blogs shoot strands back at me. And others I didn't even know about shoot strands at me. And pretty soon we have this simple but enormously intricate web of interconnection, pulled together not by any single interest in a single topic, but by our many overlapping interests in dozens of topics. Blogging emphasizes who we are, not what we are or where we work or where we live. It is a new form of communicating and connecting and, for that reason alone, it is revolutionary. So, OK Chris, put me down as a 10. Sunday, October 05, 2003
Blawgs not on BloggerCon's agenda No talk of blawgs at BloggerCon, although several references to the legal issues surrounding blogging. Should shield laws protect bloggers? What is a blogger's duty to retract a potentially libelous statement? Will efforts be made to regulate blogging? What are an educational institution's obligations under COPA? But a handful of lawyer-bloggers in attendance. As previously noted, Doug Simpson, Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. I also met lawyer, consultant and former CNN correspondent Grant Perry. David Giacalone wanted to attend, but didn't. For more about BloggerCon, read this aggregated feed of BloggerCon blogs and view Dan Bricklin's pictures. Blogging's evangelists in the house of the law Yesterday's BloggerCon felt at times like a revival meeting, preaching blogs as the Internet's second coming, if not humanity's salvation. Yet I could not escape the irony of the place. Amid fiery talk of blogs cracking the matrix, of blogs as the second superpower, of blogs breaking down social, political and cultural barriers, the temple in which we worshipped was none other than Harvard Law School -- that most steadfast bulwark of established law and old-school power. Even lunch was in a room named Ropes & Gray, Boston's whitest-shoe law firm. |
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